Island audiences are welcoming Billy Baloo back to the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, where the Island-grown musical made its debut to sold-out houses last October.
Written by two generations of Vineyard singer-songwriters — Jemima James, the late Michael Mason and their son Willy Mason, who stars in the title role; his brother Sam Mason is also involved in the production — the reworked show plays Tuesday through Saturday at 7 p.m. until Sept. 14. It is directed by MJ Bruder Munafo.
Billy Baloo and Ada Evans, played by Jessie Pinnick, center this romantic comedy, set in an 1879 mining camp high in the Colorado Rockies.
When Ada arrives to take over her late mother’s general store at the camp, her only customers are Mil, Doug and Lee, three gold prospectors played by Paul Munafo, Jonathan Lipnick and Joe Casey.
Wrangling in speech and song about geology, philosophy and anything else that comes to their minds, the grizzled trio provide a comic Greek chorus — in tight harmony — as the plot unfolds.
Michael Mason, who spent half a century developing the play before he died early last year, and Willy Mason as his dramaturgical legatee, deftly sidestep the clichés of old Western melodrama in this warm-hearted musical.
Instead of a mustache-twirling villain, the unseen Silvoracious Mining Company is the show’s big-bad, with its shady labor practices, private militia and railroad henchmen conveyed by sound and lighting cues.
Filmmaker and animator Sam Mason’s understated, but effective projections add depth and motion to the versatile set design by Mac Young, bringing to life the placid flow of a creek, drifting smoke from the miners’ wood stove and the shadowy stampede of miners chasing a silver strike.
A casting change and additional song in this year’s production add another dimension to the tale: Silver miner Kevin Kelly is now an Irishman — indeed, an Irish tenor, played with gusto and astonishing vocal power by Michael Jennings Mahoney — who opines that the movements of men are controlled by the humble potato.
Discovered in the Americas, he sings, the “pratie” was taken to Ireland and became a staple crop for the poor — until it failed, forcing them to America in their turn.
“I swear God sent the pratie for to bring us all to here,” concludes the song, one of several in Billy Baloo that reveal Michael Mason’s deep interest in human social and economic systems.
Other deceptively catchy numbers include the prospectors’ manifesto Everybody Gets What They Deserve (“John Calvin wrote it, politicians vote it”) and Kevin Kelly’s impassioned plea to the miners: “Speak, silent stones, or as stones, not as men, you will perish.”
Ms. James’s songwriting, here and on her aptly-named new album Silver and Gold, tends more towards the intimate and emotional, as in Ada’s songs about her mother and the quizzical title number, which Ms. James originally wrote in the early 1970s.
Ms. James also wrote the winsome Beaver Moon, a lilting duet for Ada and camp follower Laura Lindsay (played by Michaela Brown) that could easily fit into an Americana playlist.
The cast is backed by a well-rehearsed trio led by musical director Bill Peek, best known as a church organist and leader of the Island Community Chorus, who’s also an accomplished folk musician.
Joining Mr. Peek on piano and guitar are upright bassist Nathan Varga and Paul Woodiel, a violinist and mandolinist who plays with Broadway shows and symphony orchestras.
It’s worth making an effort to be seated on time, just to hear these three outstanding musicians play the overture and entr’acte medleys.
In honor of its homegrown hit, the playhouse is offering Locals’ Night tickets at $35 for Island residents on August 28, August 30, Sept. 4, Sept. 6, Sept. 11 and Sept. 13.
Space permitting, $35 rush tickets for any performance are available at the box office an hour before show time.
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